stavvers

Are all coppers bastards?

I know a song

And it isn’t very long

It goes

All Coppers Are Bastards!

-Traditional protest song

ACAB. It doesn’t mean Always Carry A Bible, which explains why many who have the letters tattooed across their knuckles do not have any religious texts about their person.

Some people hate the police. Really fucking hate the police, usually following a negative experience like a beating, repeated racially motivated stop-and-searches or other violations of human rights. Others mistrust the police thoroughly, feeling as though it might be better not to get the police involved. Many more have a neutral opinion to law enforcement, would call the cops after a mugging but otherwise displaying indifference. Some even love the police. Usually it’s people from the first group who believe that all coppers are bastards.

All of these evaluations of the police, though, are based on anecdote and experience. A good experience with the police will lead to a higher personal evaluation of the police, a bad experience the opposite.

Where does the truth lie? Are all coppers bastards?

It is time to do some science.

The police personality

The first question we need to ask ourselves is, is “being a bastard” a personality trait? There are certainly some kinds of personality which seem obnoxious and unpleasant, such as right-wing authoritarianism or the “dark triad”, a personality type which includes narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Fortunately for us, there’s no evidence to suggest that police tend to be narcissistic, Machiavellian psychopaths or right-wing authoritarians, although there certainly do seem to be some personality traits which are common to police.

The police are subjected to tests in the “interview”, and studying the difference between those who make the cut and those who do not can provide insight into the police personality. In one comparison, it was found that successful applicants to join the police were more dominant, more independent, more intelligent, more masculine and more empathic than the unsuccessful applicants. Presumably, the unsuccessful applicants went on to become bailiffs.

A problem with this method is that those who apply to join the police may well be different to the general population. To better see if there is a “police personality”, it may be prudent to compare police to the non-porcine population. In such comparisons, police emerge as more conservative, “tough-minded” and extraverted than general population norms (matched to the police sample by socio-economic status, the statistical way of describing class). One study compared new recruits, police with less than two years of experience and the general population. Both groups of police were found to be more conservative and authoritarian than the general population, although spending time in the police seemed to lower levels of conservatism and authoritarianism. However, time spent in the police also led to a more intolerant view of immigration and more support for the death penalty: the authors concluded that the police attracts people who are conservative and authoritarian and while training has a temporary “liberalising effect”, service results in greater levels of racial intolerance.

There are several issues with police personality research. Sample sizes in studies are often fairly small, and it is difficult to choose a representative comparison group. Furthermore, it is difficult to tease out whether personality differences are a product of an internal trait or socialisation within the police. Certainly, the shifts in test measurements over time would suggest some effect of being in the police. If all coppers are bastards, it may be a product of their social environment rather than being immutable bastards all along.

Police culture

Several attempts have been made to study the “culture” in which police are socialised: in other words, police norms and what police as a group believe to be acceptable behaviour and beliefs. In synthesising insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology, it appears that police culture values an “us and them” mentality; an ethos which values bravery, autonomy and secrecy; and authoritarianism. Furthermore, there is a strong sense of hierarchy among police: they respect taking orders from their superiors. These cultural aspects may alienate them from the rest of the population, thus enforcing their own social norms.

Testing the affects of police culture is a difficult task: it is tough to investigate something so comprehensive empirically. One study investigated whether police brutality was related to police social norms. This was done by a survey methodology: police officers were asked questions about how severe they thought deviant behaviour such as corruption (in the form of accepting gifts), excessive force and theft to be. They were also asked how serious they believed their peers to think these behaviours. Of the three types of deviant behaviour, corruption was thought to be least serious, while theft was thought more serious than excessive force. The perceived opinions of their peers was an important predictor: police officers who believed their colleagues thought excessive force not serious were significantly more likely to have been complained about by the public. This suggests that the opinions of fellow police is important: in an environment where violence is thought to be acceptable, police may be more violent. A flaw in this study is its self-reported nature. A better test would be to use a network approach and identify whether more violent police socialise more with other violent police.

Culturally, acceptance of the Human Rights Act is low among police. In a qualitative interview study, it was found that since the introduction of the HRA, there has been little raised awareness of human rights. In fact, what the legislation became was a kind of bureaucratic paperwork which is used by officers to justify and legitimise their existing practices: the authors conclude it is used as a way of “protecting officers from criticism and blame”. As police culture values secrecy, this is hardly surprising.

One very important aspect of police culture is that police wear a uniform. A uniform sets the police aside from everyone else: it is hardly normal to wander round in a tit-shaped hat and a high-vis stab-proof vest, after all. This serves to increase isolation of the police from everyone else and may serve to reinforce the culture they have created. The uniform itself produces interesting psychological effects: it can create a strong sense of identity which can lead to negative effects discussed in the next section. The colour of the uniform, trivial as it may seem, also matters. Most police wear dark colours–the Met wear black. The problem with black uniforms is that they lead to aggression. No, really. One study identified a clear link between aggression and sports teams wearing black, which has clear implications for the kind of policing we may see. One wonders, then, whether the high-visibility vests and jaunty powder blue baseball caps we see on the Territorial Support Group in crowd situations are actually a measure to stop them from beating the fuck out of people indiscriminately.

The scary 60s social psychology effects

The 60s was an interesting decade for psychology: social psychology had taken off, and ethics boards had not yet clamped down on doing really disturbing research. One of the most famous of these is the Stanford Prison Experiment. In this study, twelve participants were randomly allocated the role of prisoners, and another twelve allocated to playing guards. The guards were given khaki uniforms and mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact. They also wore wooden batons, which they were not allowed to use on the prisoners–they were just props. The prisoners were dressed in smocks and stocking caps to cover their hair. After a mock arrest, the prisoners were interned in the basement of a university building. The guards were instructed they were not allowed to physically harm the prisoners. Everyone was psychologically healthy when the study began.

Despite all of these safeguards, it went to shit pretty quickly. The guards began using psychological methods of torture, removing prisoners’ mattresses, forcing them to repeat their prisoner numbers over and over, refusing to allow prisoners to use the toilet or empty the toilet-bucket, and punishing prisoners with removing their clothes. A prison riot broke out on the second night. After six days, the experiment was called off. Some of the guards expressed disappointment at this: they were enjoying themselves.

This shocking study demonstrates an effect called deindividuation: the loss of a sense of personal identity in a crowd or role-play. In this situation, merely putting on a uniform and being given power led to horrifying instances of sadism. The implications of this for the police are terrifying.

Deindividuation often appears to lead to very negative psychological effects, as demonstrated in a recent Derren Brown experiment, The Gameshow. Derren gave the participants masks and the power to make decisions which would affect another person’s life. By the end of the hour, they had had this random person falsely accused, arrested, kidnapped and run over by a car. I would recommend watching the show: he gives a brilliant account of deindividuation. Of course, Derren Brown being Derren Brown, he is somewhat misleading–he uses another phenomenon on top of deindividuation, and eggs the crowd on. The effect of obedience can have consequences as dire as deindividuation.

Police forces have a hierarchical structure: orders come down from above. At our most wishful thinking, we tend to hope that the police are moral human beings who will disobey the orders given if these orders are horrific. Stanley Milgram believed something similar–that people, after the Second World War, would no longer “just follow orders”. He designed an experiment to test this.

In the Milgram experiment, there was one participant and two stooges. The participant was told they were participating in a memory test. One stooge played their learner, the other was the researcher. Every time the learner got a question wrong, the participant was told to give them an electric shock. Each time, the shock was of a greater voltage. The learner would scream, and eventually go silent. The participants, when they wavered, were prompted to give another electric shock by the researcher.

65% of participants delivered the highest level of electric shock, 450 volts. This was delivered after the learner had gone silent, and was beyond lethal. Our good friend Derren Brown demonstrates the phenomenon with none of his typical misdirection. This is actually how it happens.

The capacity to “just follow orders” is within most of us. When combined with the orders the police may receive, this is frightening.

So, are all coppers bastards?

Some police officers may be lovely people. They might be the nicest person in the world when off-duty. While at work and in their uniform, though, they are unlikely to be on your side. Combine a culture which can legitimise and reinforce violence with racial intolerance and the basic human capacity to become sadistic in a uniform and obey horrific orders, and a terrifying picture emerges. Can we trust a police officer on duty? Probably not. The capacity for being a bastard is in all of us, and the job brings it out in coppers.

In which I post an inspirational quote

I’m not usually one to post inspirational quotes; this isn’t fucking Tumblr after all. This is a quote which eloquently words something which I have struggled with wording.

But the evil of pinning faith to indirect action is far greater than any such minor results. The main evil is that it destroys initiative, quenches the individual rebellious spirit, teaches people to rely on someone else to do for them what they should do for themselves; finally renders organic the anomalous idea that by massing supineness together until a majority is acquired, then through the peculiar magic of that majority, this supineness is to be transformed into energy. That is, people who have lost the habit of striking for themselves as individuals, who have submitted to every injustice while waiting for the majority to grow, are going to become metamorphosed into human high-explosives by a mere process of packing!

The quote comes from “Direct Action” by Voltairine de Cleyre, an anarchist, theorist and feminist from the late 19th/early 20th century. It’s well worth reading the entire piece, there’s a really entertaining bit where she talks about strikes (“now, everybody knows that a strike of any size means violence…”), which shows just how disempowered our unions have become. She also wrote some marvellous tirades against marriage, such as “Sex Slavery“, which you should all go and read right now.

Now for your regularly scheduled somewhat angry ranting.

Magic numbers

Let me start with a pop cultural mathematical axiom: the rule of three. In order to best calculate the number of people a man has slept with, divide the figure he gives by three. For a woman, multiply the figure she gives by three. Essentially, people lie about their magic number. And there are gender differences in the format of this lie.

It seems that science has uncovered some truth behind the notion. In this [unfortunately paywalled] study, the researchers made gender differences in sexual behaviour disappear using a nifty trick: the bogus pipeline methodology. In bogus pipeline studies, participants are linked up to something they are told is an infallible lie detector machine. This method has been widely used in psychology studies and seems to be consistent with the truth–for example, in drug studies, it correlates with physical measures of drug usage. A similar method was used in The Wire in the famous photocopier scene.

Thinking that a magical machine could whether they were lying, suddenly participants were far more willing to be honest about their magic numbers and other aspects of sexual behaviour. Contrary to societal expectations, there were no gender differences. Magic numbers and other experiences were the same.

It was not quite as dramatic as the rule of three would predict, but the results were clear: men say they have had sex with more people; women, fewer.

The rule of three states that this effect takes place because women don’t want to seem like sluts, while men want to seem like players, and this was largely similar to the conclusions the authors of the study drew: people exaggerate or downplay their level of sexual experience due to expectations of their gender. In general, our societal expectations of sex and sexuality is that sex is something men want and women put up with to maintain a relationship. Throw in a hefty dose of slut-shaming levelled at women and it’s easy to see why people might feel a little uncomfortable with being truthful about the sex they have been having.

On a personal level, I hate it when someone asks my magic number, because I honestly don’t know an exact total. I’ve never really bothered counting.

What exactly ‘counts’ anyway? In order to calculate one’s magic number, one needs to define sex somehow. Some consider sex with a man to count if it involves a penis penetrating something: this is heteronormative and phenomenally narrow. Sex can be mindblowing without any dick-in-a-hole contact. And what of sex between two women? There is still a pervasive view in the mainstream thar it’s not really sex, and if it is, what makes it become sex? The answer here, when I’ve asked, is generally ‘oral sex counts’. Once again, creativity is lost.

And what of group sex? Sometimes you can share a profound connection with another person, without ever touching each other.

In short, it is remarkably difficult to quantify ‘what counts’ after any shift away from the monogamous, heteronormative model of sex. So even if I wanted to, I couldn’t count my number of sexual partners.

When asked, it is almost always by heterosexual men. Often I decline to comment as it’s not a particularly polite question and its answer should be of no consequence. Sometimes, when pushed, I lie, pulling an imaginary figure out of thin air just to make the conversation stop. Only once when directly asked did I honestly answer: I don’t know. Only once was I asked by someone I felt could handle the truth.

I still can’t understand the fixation with the reducing an individual wealth of fucking and fingering and frotting and filth into a bare, basic number. It’s so much more than that.

And yet, heteronormativity adopts this approach and people share imaginary figures they think someone else wants to hear. Can we not just abandon the nonsensical concept entirely?

For fuck’s sake: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the porno

Some news fails to raise the anger, and just causes a tired sigh of having one’s lowest expectations met. This story is one of them. The article is in French, so I will translate the important bits. Unfortunately, my French isn’t brilliant and I lack the fluency to spot implicit sexism and subtle rape apologism. That doesn’t really matter: it’s not like any of the crap in the story is subtle.

In short, they’re making a porn film about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and that time he sexually assaulted a woman who was cleaning his hotel room. A high-profile rape case is apparently deemed sexy enough to crack one out to these days: perhaps the Daily Mail articles didn’t go into sufficient detail to achieve maximum turgidity, so a porn film became necessary.

According to the synopsis, “David Sex King, owner of a large financial institution, cannot resist the charms of a chambermaid who comes to work. Oh dear! This is a great opportunity for her to emerge from anonymity and use all ways to make this horny old goat pay.” This scenario gives priority to the side of the venal Naffissatou Diallo and is likely to startle feminist associations.

Not so much a startle as a weary “for fucks’s sake” from over here. It is nothing but simple, blatant victim-blaming. Diallo is lascivious, Strauss-Kahn the lusty chaud lapin who is completely incapable of resisting Diallo’s sexy wiles. He couldn’t help himself, as they say.

It’s not even novel porn. As the article says,

Otherwise, “in the bathroom of the suite, to the hearing in court, to prison”, it sounds like a traditional porno.

The same old tedious porn tropes will be trotted out. A sexy French maid. A sexy judge (possibly with a sexy jury). A sexy (probably inexplicably heterosexual) prison. The only difference here is that it is pasted on top of a real-life event where real people were involved. I wonder, what would Diallo make of being portrayed as a bit of exotic porn-totty, the sexual assault nothing more than a set-up to a string of hackneyed porn clichés?

It’s more than tasteless. It’s insensitive, it’s unpleasant, it’s downright nasty. I am not in the least bit surprised that this exists.

Big hat tip to @petitefeministe who found this story. Check out her blog; she’s one of my favourite feminists.

ETA: Futher awesomeness: Petite Feministe has translated the article here

The Tories try to absolve responsibility with magical in-utero interventions

Following the summer riots the Tories have been falling over themselves to look like they’re Doing Something (usually terrible ideas). Another dreadful idea has emerged from the Cabinet Office, this one inexplicably originating from the Department of Work and Pensions, with somewhat unfortunate implications.

Here, Iain Duncan Smith has proposed magical in-utero interventions to stop kids from joining gangs. It is the logical conclusion to the “blame the parents” line; the parents are now so much to blame that it must be happening right at the moment of conception.

“I am talking about intervening when the child is conceived, not even when born.”

This has the implication of following the anti-choice line: that life begins immediately at conception. This is hardly surprising, considering IDS has a distinctly anti-choice voting agenda. I do not think this is a poor choice of words here. He genuinely wants early intervention from the moment of conception.

Now, while in utero environment may have some effect on later life, it is hardly likely that the solution proposed here will be helpful in any way: IDS wants “more male role models”. It is another subtle rehashing of the “single mothers are to blame for the riots” line.

There are three other interesting things in the proposals. Firstly, IDS is falling over himself to not appear like a misogynist, repeating over and over that it’s actually gangs that are misogynistic, and that his proposal to blame women for their children’s behaviour is absolutely fine and dandy.

Second is the outright admission that for something so important, the government is actually not going to bother trying to spend any extra money on the solution:

“There is a lot of money being spent on families and estates but it is dysfunctional money that goes to solve only short-term problems.”

They are absolving responsibility here. Shifting around, looking as though they are Doing Something. when in fact they’re just rehashing rhetoric and not bothering investing in evidence-based interventions.

Finally, it just doesn’t make any goddamn sense. In the rush to blame the parents, IDS has confused himself hugely. Sometimes the gangs are the problem; sometimes parents. I think he thinks parents are responsible for children joining gangs. It’s hard to tell.

Essentially, what is happening here is that Iain Duncan Smith is spraying his blame-gun around indiscriminately. He doesn’t want to bear any responsibility for riots caused by poverty caused by the government of which he is a part. And so, nonsensically, he absolves responsibility.

It is the norm for this government. It will have real implications for generations.

The world is a prison

Yesterday, two things happened to me.

First, I broke my Twitter-blocks-in-a-day figure by miles, blocking 52 people who I believe to be nasty little proto-fascists. It happened in the discussion about the Dale Farm eviction. It was brutal and violent: the police and the bailiffs used aggressive tactics to throw people off land that they owned: as yet, several have been hospitalised, while no injuries to police were reported. For some reason, 52 nasty little proto-fascists think that storming someone’s home and beating people out is all right. They believe that it is somehow deserved, that these people are somehow “illegal” in their very existence, due to a small dispute over planning permission. They believe that the police absolutely should beat people, shoot them with not-so-non-lethal tasers and smash down their walls with sledgehammers. Some of this 52 expressed outright racism. In many others, the tone was clearly there. I decided I wanted nothing to do with these nasty little proto-fascists. What could I do in 140 characters that would persuade them that their line of thinking was sickeningly dangerous. I didn’t want to hear their torrents of hate. So I blocked them.

Later in the day, the second thing happened. I went to a screening of the film In The Land Of The Free, which told the story of the Angola 3. These men have been held in solitary confinement in a Louisiana jail for decades, convicted of crimes they almost certainly did not commit, because they were militants who were associated with the Black Panthers. Two of the Angola 3 remain in prison, in solitary confinement. They have been locked up alone for 37 years. The other, Robert King, was released after 29 years in solitary.

He was there at the screening and he spoke. It was a privilege: this person has been through absolute hell, and yet he appeared in front of us with dignity, his spirit remaining firmly intact. Hearing the voice of someone who had been a part of an inspirational group was truly moving. It sounds really cheesy. At the back of my mind was an awareness that the fangirling was probably really cheesy. The power of what Robert King said made the hairs on the back of my neck rise up.

King was asked how he managed to stay sane in his long imprisonment. He said that when he was radicalised, he came to the conclusion that America was also a prison, that the world was a prison. He was locked up in a prison within a prison. The prison many of us inhabit is a system of oppression, which was particularly salient for a man like King, being young and black in the South in the sixties. The prison exists in our minds.

It is a very powerful metaphor that King used, that we are all prisoners. Some of us fight for freedom and liberation: King himself fought for what he could. He tried to improve conditions for black prisoners before his stint in solitary confinement. He battled for decades to be released from his solitary cell. Outside, he is still fighting and will not stop.

I am not imprisoned happily. I shout and scream, I protest, and I sometimes fear that the state will crack down to the extent that I find my prison a little more literal.

Yet there are some who kiss the bars and do not mind that they are not free. Their minds are so locked up in prejudices and absorbed rhetoric that they are thoroughly unwilling to take in any information that might challenge these views. They sit in the dark for fear of seeing the chains. And so they hate outsiders and throw around racism because it is easier to sit comfortably in their cell than it is to start trying to pick the lock. They appear as nasty little proto-fascists, loudly claiming that everything the system does is completely just.

In a way, I want to help them break out, yet I suspect that even if the guards were all dead and the door was wide open, many would still sit on their bunks, unsure of what to do next, afraid of anything new.

Engaging is difficult: the level of racism that I saw yesterday felt insurmountable. And so we are still where we were when Robert King was incarcerated: how do we unlock the prison of thought?

I commented on #occupyLSX’s statement

Occupy London have released a statement and invited comment. I’ve reproduced my comment on it here, in case anyone’s interested.

Congratulations on occupying!

Your statement is shaping up well, although in my opinion some of the alternatives you propose are not quite attacking the root of the problem: fairer taxation and stopping cuts would still maintain a broken system and therefore only be papering over cracks.

My major concern, though, is about point 2: “We are of all ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, generations, sexualities dis/abilities and faiths. We stand together with occupations all over the world.”

It is commendable that you have people present from all walks of life, but the biggest hurdle now is to make Occupy London a safe space for these people. Too often, occupation-based movements fall prey to reflecting the prejudices in a corrupt system. It is therefore imperative that you commit towards making the voices of the oppressed and vulnerable heard: the women, the disabled, people from ethnic minorities, youths and the elderly, queer people–too often, even in a well meaning occupation, these people are silenced by the privileged majority. In order to build the better world that you seek, it is utterly necessary that you address these issues within your own movement.

In point 7, you say “We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world’s resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich.” Here, you are talking only of unfair wealth distribution. I believe that you should add to this point, or point 2 above, that you also aim to address other forms of oppression: capitalism is not the only oppressive force which harms people.

I am concerned that you are already travelling in the direction of excluding marginalised voices from your movement. Mere hours after the occupation began, you gave platform to Julian Assange. Other women have expressed concernsabout this: we are not comfortable with a man who has not been cleared from rape charges being warmly invited and adulated into the movement.

Please do not dismiss these concerns, and please distance yourselves from Assange. Concerns about giving a platform to a suspected rapist are legitimate, and to dismiss these concerns will make many feel unwelcome from a movement which reflects the same prejudices as the rest of society.

You have a golden opportunity here to be part of lasting change. Don’t let yourselves become oppressors.

Why I’m confused about #wearethe99

I’ll start this by saying that I actually have no beef with Occupy Wall Street, despite the fact this is my second blogpost in as many days where I express criticism of the movement.

Today, I am annoyed by the We Are The 99 Per Cent slogan. Specifically, I am pissed off for statistical reasons.

The number is arbitrary. It comes some 2007 figures: that 1 per cent of Americans control 43% of financial wealth–this leaves everyone else in the 99%. This is an interesting figure and highlights a shocking wealth disparity of which many were previously unaware. And yet, the 99% cutoff is arbitrary. In fact, if one moves figures around, an even more interesting picture emerges.

The top 5% of earners in the USA control 72% of financial wealth. Just shifting focus from “we are the 99 per cent” to “we are the 95%” highlights an even more shocking disparity: almost three quarters of financial wealth is controlled by a tiny fraction. Even more interesting: bottom 80% of earners in the US control just 7% of financial wealth. That figure is thoroughly staggering: the vast majority of Americans control a completely negligible sum.

If one looks at who is in the 1%, another interesting picture emerges. Less than 14% of the top 1% are in the finance industry: it is hardly the cartel of bankers that the slogan portrays. In fact, quite a few Wall Street workers would probably find themselves in the 99%: the earning cutoff to be in the top percentile is just under $600 000, while the average salary on Wall Street is $396 000. By shifting from “we are the 99%” to 95% or 80%, this somewhat embarrassing little fact disappears.

And so I wonder why they alighted on 99% rather than 95% or 80%. These figures are still huge, and these figures still cover almost everyone. The number makes little sense to me, and a statement about distribution of wealth in the USA can be better made with different figures. Even by revising it down slightly–to the threshold for statistical significance–the statement can be made, and can be made better. I genuinely can’t see any good reason for sticking with 99%.

There are also two elephants in the room regarding how the “we are the 99%” figure is used, statistically speaking. Firstly, it neglects broader issues regarding race and gender wealth inequalities. This is a crucial issue which requires tackling head-on, and yet it is handwaved away with a broad-brush slogan, again sacrificing what could be a very important statement to make in favour of mass appeal.

The second is a vast issue. The “we are the 99%” applies to US-specific, not global inequality. If one looks at global inequality, earners of the US median wage suddenly find themselves in the top 1%. They are no longer the “moral majority”, they are part of that tiny fraction which controls most of the wealth. If Occupy Wall Street is truly part of a global movement, this issue needs to be addressed: that what is a relatively vast majority in the USA is suddenly a tiny minority of super-wealthy in the world sphere.

Ultimately, when one looks at the numbers, “we are the 99%” is a slogan, and not much more. It could make its point better by simply shifting its own arbitrary cutoff, to lose no mass appeal. Then, by thinking globally, perhaps it can make a difference.

Thanks to @unknownj and @interama for pointing out global figures, and @samdodsworth for the breakdown of the top 1%.

Cargo cult activism

During the Second World War, the indigenous people of the South Pacific experienced an upheaval: suddenly their islands were flooded with naval airbases. It wasn’t all bad: the big aeroplanes bought exciting new things: food, clothes, medicines. The people grew to like it. When the war ended, the troops were gone, but the people wished the big aeroplanes full of fantastic goods would come back.

So they did what they thought would summon them. They built runways, performed military drills and fashioned air traffic control towers, where they sat wearing headphones of wood.

Unsurprisingly, the big aeroplanes never came back. It was never about the headphones or the military drills? Yet how were the cargo cults to know this? By all appearances, these trappings summoned the big aeroplanes and all of their bounty.

In activism, we sometimes find ourselves in a similar position. The most egregious example, perhaps, is the occupation of public squares. It stems from the uprising in Egypt early this year, where millions of Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square until they toppled their government and achieved regime change. Admittedly, things have not exactly got better for the Egyptians since their regime change, but the formula appears to go like this:

Camp out in public square
???
REVOLUTION

And so Tahrir Square became something of a meme. In the months that followed, conscious attempts were made to copy the great Tahrir Square occupation. In Spain, they camped out in Puerto del Sol. In Greece, Syntagma Square. The UK made several attempts: on March 26th, the word went up to turn Hyde Park into Tahrir Square. People camped out in Trafalgar Square for several weekends. A picnic was held on the steps of the Bank of England that was called an occupation.

What do these things have in common? None of them led to a revolution.

Then there is the example of the ongoing occupation of Wall Street. The people have been there for weeks, now, and are gaining vast popular support. Comparisons to Tahrir Square have been made, of course. Unlike Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street is unlikely to lead to revolution: perhaps that was never their goal at all–the occupation has been described as its own demand. There is hope, of course. There is always hope: the occupation could genuinely be used as an organising space to build a better world if it so chose, but it will need to go beyond camping in a public square. The numerous copycat occupations springing up across the States are as unlikely to breed revolution as any of the other squares.

So what is the difference between these occupations and Tahrir Square?

As MagicZebras points out, it’s not about a bloody square. We are a cargo cult, pitching tents in public squares in the vain hope that it will summon better times.

Part of the problem is location. Tahrir Square was prominently placed in front of governmental offices, a visible statement of “we’re here and we’re watching you”. In contrast, many of the other square occupations, including Wall Street, have been tucked away in minimally-invasive places.

Another problem is numbers: millions of people were in Tahrir Square, in contrast to the thousands who camp out in the larger derivative square occupations.

Another big difference is the conditions from which the occupations sprung up: Tahrir Square happened after days of lively protesting and rioting, while all of the others, save Syntagma Square, happened in conditions of relative peace.

In contrast to organising camps such as Climate Camp or the Greenham Common Peace Camp, square occupations are often not used as a springboard for proximal direct action. This is a shame: Occupy Wall Street easily has the numbers and the proximity to do some serious disruption of trading, yet they have not. While its utility as a collective living space and a demonstration of communal spirit is admirable, it could do so much more.

And I wonder, then, if it is hamstrung by attempting to be like Tahrir Square. In Tahrir Square, their presence alone was disruptive: millions of people, refusing to leave until the government they despised had gone. In Wall Street, the protesters now have mayoral approval to stay as long as they like. Time will tell if they seize this opportunity and escalate. It is certainly the best way to move forward, if their ultimate aim is to fix a broken system.

In short, then, we must stop with the Tahrir Square cargo cult. Tahrir Square was perhaps unique: a product of its conditions. It was certainly not just occupying a square that caused revolution, and we may need to let go of the romantic notion that going camping will overthrow governments. For our own motivation, we must be realistic about what we can achieve with an action, rather than dreamy aspirations. Failure is ultimately disheartening.

We are unique. We are not Tahrir Square, and nor should we try to be. Let each action be a response to its own circumstances, with conscious awareness of our own strengths and limitations.

We are not Tahrir Square, and nor do we need to be.

Porn-blocking is a terrible idea. Full stop.

Anarchism suggests that the forces of the state, capitalism and religion interact with each other to restrict liberty. Sometimes anarchist propaganda writes itself, when the state, capitalism and religion get all nice and chummy with each other and join forces to restrict liberty.

In this case, four major ISPs have decided to start up an “opt-in” system for viewing “adult material” as part of a “think of the children” initiative from the government and a Christian lobby group. They have also set up a website to make it easier for people to complain about things that are unsuitable for children, although the site does not facilitate complaining about a government which is thoroughly unsuitable for children and will put almost half a million children into relative poverty during their existence.

The “porn-blocking” system will be based on the principles of adult content locks on mobile internet, which is hugely problematic. SonniesEdge has written a fantastic post about what is wrong with this system. For gay teens, internet pornography can save them from unwanted outing and risk of violence. For young people everywhere, blocking “adult material” means blocking advice about sexuality, sexual health, abortion and, very importantly, information for trans teens that they are not alone. To block this content is dangerous. Such systems do block this important content: my phone wouldn’t even let me open the post in which SonniesEdge talked about these problems!

There are issues with feasibility for porn-blocking: the internet is a big place, and there’s a lot of content. Two options are available: the “baby with the bathwater” option, where an overzealous internet filter also merrily blocks out innocuous websites about birds with slightly rude names or common names, so most people opt-in for adult material because it’s really annoying not to. The other option is a lighter filter which is rendered thoroughly useless by the fact that most porn gets through anyway. At any rate, either is useless. You can find anything on the internet if you work hard enough.

There will be ramifications from such policy, and for a system so geared towards “family values”, problems will arise within the establishment-sponsored nuclear family. What of relationships where one partner wishes to opt-in to see porn, while the other does not want hir partner watching porn? Furtive porn-wanks are rather harder when the internet bill differentiates between whether you get the porn or not.

I don’t believe porn is inherently misogynistic or racist or homophobic or transphobic. The thing is, most of it is. You have to work hard to find porn that isn’t somehow oppressive. By my own value system, I would rather not have my theoretical kids stumbling on material of that nature, lest they internalise somewhat that set of beliefs–and statistically, given the abundance of oppressive porn, that’s the stuff they’d be bumping into. I still think the porn block is an utterly rotten idea.

The problem is not that the big evil internets are corrupting our children. The problem is that we live in a world that allows oppressive porn to be the default, the dominant, the mainstream. The problem is patriarchy, the problem is kyriarchy, the problem is prejudice, both benevolent and hostile. The problem is that capitalism sees these things as a wonderful way to make money and reinforces these horrible beliefs, making itself richer while conditioning consumers to buy further into these values.

Capitalism is cleverly playing both teams in this little porn-blocking escapade. Its Ronald MacDonald head smiles benevolently and vows to protect the kids. Its Hugh Hefner head leers and asks a young woman if she would please bleach her anus so she can look just like all the other porn stars. Both become stronger: if they block the internet, young people will have a far harder time accessing information about why the mainstream porny view of sex and sexuality is so incredibly off, and what sex and sexuality can be. And that’s far more dangerous than accidentally stumbling on a close-up of improbably double penetration.

The solution is not to block the internet. The solution is to block the means for oppressive, artificial power structures to thrive.